Ransom Valley (Wind River Book 7)

by James Reasoner

  "Better not be too much later," Beaumont growled around the cigar.

  Maguire's voice was light and cheerful again as he said, "That's enough talk. Somebody deal the cards. Here, Bob, give me that deck. I won the last hand."

  Maguire shuffed and resumed dealing as Cole and Lon pulled back silently. When they were far enough away for a whisper to be safe, Cole asked, "Did you get a good look at the lay-out?"

  "Yeah," Lon replied. "Brenda must be in that cabin, otherwise they wouldn't be standin' guard over it."

  "That's my thinking, too," Cole said.

  "I didn't see any way to get in, though. The place didn't look like it had any windows in it, just the door."

  "We can't be sure of that until we take a look at the back, but you're probably right. That's on old trapper's cabin, and those fellas didn't care about windows." Cole paused as he thought for a second. "That doesn't mean the door is the only way in, though."

  "How else – "

  "Did you notice the roof?"

  A puzzled silence came from Lon for a couple of seconds before he said, "Well, not really. I know the cabin has a roof on it – "

  "And I saw light coming through it, too," Cole said, "which likely means there are some places where it's rotted out and fallen in. Some of those holes might be big enough for a man to get through."

  Lon's tone was excited now as he asked, "Do you think we could get Brenda out that way?"

  "Not without making enough noise to alert the guard. But if he was distracted, which he ought to be once the shooting starts, we could jump him from inside the cabin and take him by surprise."

  "It sounds like it might work," Lon whispered. "What do we do next?"

  "We need to get around behind that cabin."

  The two of them spent the next fifteen minutes doing that, moving carefully and using all the cover they could so they wouldn't be seen. When they reached a spot where they could observe the back of the cabin, Cole saw that his hunch was right in both respects. The ramshackle building didn't have any windows, but light from inside seeped through a ragged opening in the roof.

  "Why didn't Brenda climb out and try to get away?" Lon asked.

  "She probably can't reach that hole from inside. Even if she could, she might not be strong enough to pull herself up through it."

  "Probably not," Lon agreed. "We can boost her up, though."

  "We shouldn't have to. If we can get rid of that guard, we can go out the door." Cole gestured toward the roof. "Right now we've got to get up there."

  They catfooted to the rear wall of the cabin. Using hand signals, Cole indicated that he would boost Lon up, and then in turn Lon could help him. Cole bent over and made a stirrup out of his hands.

  The rough logs with crude mud chinking in between provided plenty of little gaps for handholds. Lon dug his fingers into the narrow openings, put a booted foot in the makeshift stirrup of Cole's hands, and lifted himself. Cole clenched his jaw to keep from letting out a grunt of effort as he supported the young cowboy's weight.

  Lon reached higher with one hand and shifted some of the burden from Cole. He wedged the toe of his other boot into a gap and took even more of the weight on it. When he reached up again he was able to grasp the edge of the roof, since the cabin wasn't particularly tall.

  Lon didn't make much noise as he scrambled onto the roof, but it was enough to make Cole wince and hope that no one else heard it, even Brenda. If she had, she might take it for a wild animal or something like that and be afraid enough to raise an alarm. That would ruin everything.

  Cole didn't hear anything but continued silence from inside the cabin, though. After a moment, Lon extended a hand down to him.

  Cole had to climb a couple of feet before he could reach up and clasp wrists with Lon. After that it took only seconds for him to make it to the roof, too. Both men stretched out on the rough wooden shakes that served as shingles. Cole hoped fervently that no other sections of the roof were on the verge of collapsing. If he or Lon, or both of them, fell through, that could ruin the plan, too.

  They climbed high enough on the sloping roof so that Cole could see the bluffs looming black against the stars. Frenchy was supposed to be up there watching for the signal, which he would relay in turn to Kermit Sawyer and launch the attack.

  Cole had several matches in his shirt pocket. He took out one of them, snapped it to life with his fingernail, and held it over his head, moving it back and forth in a steady motion. When it burned down, he lit a second match and did the same with it.

  If everything went according to plan, that would send Frenchy hurrying to the other side of the bluff to send his own signal.

  Lon's breath hissed between his teeth. Cole heard that and looked over to see the young cowboy peering down through the hole in the roof. Cole crawled over to join him.

  From where they were, they couldn't see Brenda, but Cole heard deep, stready breathing that told him she was asleep, probably in a bunk against the rear wall. Cole tested the wood around the collapsed place to see if it was strong enough to support a man's weight as he hung from it and dropped through the hole. He thought it was, although it sagged a bit.

  As soon as the shooting started, they would make their move. Cole put his mouth against Lon's ear and breathed, "You go through the roof. I'll slide down the front side and drop on top of the guard. Be ready to give me a hand if I need you to."

  Lon nodded. Now all they had to do was wait.

  Seconds stretched out into long, tense minutes. Cole wondered when the attack would come. What if Frenchy hadn't seen the signal, he asked himself? What if the Diamond S foreman wasn't even still alive? He and Lon could be waiting for a distraction that would never come.

  When something happened it wasn't what he was expecting. At the front of the cabin, a man said, "Step aside, Stafford. I'll take over for you."

  The guard replied, "I'm supposed to stand guard over the girl for another hour, Lije. That's what Maguire said, anyway."

  "I don't give a damn what Maguire said." Lije Beaumont's voice was thick and slurred. He'd been drinking while he was playing cards, from the sound of it. "I'm goin' in to see that girl. Her and me got to get better acquainted."

  "Maguire won't like – "

  "By God, didn't I tell you I don't give a damn about Maguire!" Cole heard the unmistakable menacing sound of a gun being cocked. "Now get out of here."

  "All right, but I ain't to blame for this," the guard said with a whining note in his voice.

  "Just keep your mouth shut and go get some sleep," Beaumont snapped.

  Cole could tell how tense Lon had become beside him. Both of them had heard the conversation clearly, and they knew what it meant. Beaumont was drunk enough to defy Maguire's orders that Brenda be left alone.

  Just like that, the two men on the roof had run out of time.

  Chapter 17

  Loud, angry voices woke Brenda. A wave of instinctive fear went through her as she sat up on the bunk and pushed her dark hair out of her face. Whatever the men were arguing about out there, she knew somehow that it didn't bode well for her.

  That feeling strengthened when someone jerked the door open, dragging one corner of it in the dirt because it hung crookedly. The man called Beaumont loomed in the doorway, the obvious winner in the argument. An ugly grin that was more of a leer spread across his face.

  "Well, now," he said in a gloating tone, "look what we got here. It's time you and me get to know each other better, girl."

  Brenda cringed back against the wall behind her. "You . . . you shouldn't be in here," she told Beaumont. "Maguire said – "

  "Everybody's so damned worried about what Maguire says!" Beaumont exploded. "Well, I'm not. I do what I please, and if Adam Maguire don't like it, he can just go to hell!"

  He moved another step into the cabin, then another and another. His right hand came up and stretched out toward the terrified young woman on the bunk.

  A faint, sudden noise made Brenda look up. She
saw movement as something dropped through a hole in the roof.

  No, not something. Someone. The man landed on Lije Beaumont's back and his weight knocked Beaumont to his knees. Amazed, Brenda realized that the man who had just tackled Beaumont was Lon Rogers, the young cowboy from the Diamond S.

  * * *

  Lon halfway expected Cole to try to stop him again, but it didn't happen this time.

  Just as well, because Lon wasn't going to let anything keep him from helping Brenda. He would have fought his way through a pack of wildcats to get to her.

  It felt almost like he had tackled a pack of wildcats as he tried to keep the man called Beaumont pinned to the floor. Beaumont twisted around and hammered a fist at him. Lon jerked his head aside so Beaumont's fist landed in a glancing blow, but it was still powerful enough to drive Lon to the side. That gave Beaumont enough room to buck his body off the floor and throw Lon off of him.

  Lon rolled over and caught himself as Beaumont clawed out the revolver holstered on his hip. Lon snapped a kick at the outlaw. His boot heel caught Beaumont on the wrist as the man tried to swing the gun around. The weapon flew from his fingers and clattered across the floor.

  Lon still didn't hear any shots coming from outside, so he left his own guns where they were and launched himself at Beaumont. The longer it was before the alarm was raised, the better. Beaumont was trying to get up, but Lon rammed into him and drove him over backward. Lon reached for Beaumont's throat and managed to get his fingers clamped around it.

  Beaumont hooked a punch into Lon's midsection. It was like the kick of a mule. Lon wanted to let go and curl up around the pain, but he forced himself to hang on and dig in harder with his thumbs as he tried to crush Beaumont's windpipe.

  The outlaw clubbed his fists against Lon's ears. He couldn't shrug off these blows. They made him jerk back. His grip on Beaumont's throat slipped. Beaumont shot up a short punch that caught Lon on the jaw and made his vision spin.

  For a moment Lon was helpless as Beaumont shoved him aside and surged to his feet. Beaumont was ready to stomp Lon to death and might have done it, too, if not for Brenda, who darted behind him and swung a tin plate in both hands, smashing it into the back of Beaumont's head with a resounding clang.

  Probably more surprised by the blow than actually hurt by it, Beaumont stumbled forward. That brought him within reach of Lon, whose head was clearing. Lon threw his arms around Beaumont's knees and heaved. The outlaw went over backward. As he fell, his head struck the old table.

  Beaumont landed in a limp, motionless sprawl. Breathless, Lon scrambled to his feet and looked down at the man. Beaumont was still breathing, but hitting his head like that had knocked him cold.

  Before Lon had a chance to think about how lucky he had been, Brenda was in his arms, clinging desperately to him and sobbing. Instinctively, Lon embraced her and said, "It's all right, it's all right."

  He didn't know if that was true, though, because at that moment gunfire finally erupted in the night.

  * * *

  A short time earlier, Frenchy LeDoux had seen the signal from Marshal Tyler down in the valley. Frenchy's upper left arm had his bandanna tied around it to stanch the blood from a deep cut he had suffered while struggling with one of the sharpshooters. The outlaw had managed to take Frenchy's knife away from him and cut him, but that advantage was short-lived. Frenchy had grabbed the man's wrist and twisted it so that the blade plunged into the sharpshooter's stomach.

  Similar struggles had taken place along the bluff on both sides of the gap. One of the Diamond S cowboys had died, but not before inflicting a mortal wound on his opponent. Four sharpshooters had been posted up here to guard the approach to the passage, and now all four of them were dead.

  And Cole's signal meant that he and Lon had found Brenda Durand.

  Time to put the rest of the plan into operation, Frenchy thought as he turned and hurried across the top of the bluff.

  When he reached the other edge, he took out a tin of matches and lit three of them, one after the other, waving them over his head so that Kermit Sawyer couldn't miss seeing them. When the last match had burned down, Frenchy dropped it and unslung the rifle from his back.

  His friends on the other side of the gap would have been watching for the signal, too. Frenchy knew they would be in position. He reached the rim where he could look down into the pitch-dark passage and dropped to one knee to wait.

  The next move was up to Sawyer. He and the rest of the Texans would charge the gap, shooting as they came, to draw the fire of the defenders. Those muzzle flashes would give away the outlaws' positions, so Frenchy and his companions could pick them off from above. That would open the passage so Sawyer and his men could ride into the valley and finish mopping up the gang.

  That was the plan, anyway, but when shots suddenly roared in the darkness, they didn't come from the Texans. Frenchy's head jerked to the right as he heard gunfire in the valley itself, which meant that Lon and Cole must have been discovered.

  And from the sound of it, they were fighting for their lives.

  * * *

  Cole knew what Lon Rogers was going to do even before the young cowboy did it. Lon loved Brenda Durand, whether she returned that feeling or not, and if that had been a woman Cole loved down there, about to be assaulted by Lije Beaumont, he would have done the same thing.

  So when Lon dropped through the hole in the roof onto Beaumont's back, Cole let him go and knew there was no point in waiting any longer. He scrambled up to the roof peak and half-ran, half-slid down the other side. The guard Beaumont had told to leave had gone only a few feet when the ruckus broke out inside the cabin. The man wheeled around and reached for his gun when he heard the commotion.

  Cole sailed into the air from the roof's edge.

  He crashed into the outlaw. Both of them went down hard, but Cole was on top, so the other man's body broke his fall to a certain extent. The impact still knocked the breath out of him for a moment.

  He recovered before the other man did and slammed a fist into the outlaw's face. Cole tried to get up, but the man shook off the effects of the blow and grabbed the front of his buckskin shirt. He pulled Cole down and butted him in the face.

  Half-stunned, Cole felt himself thrown aside. He rolled and came up on one knee. That was instinctive on his part, but as he shook his head it cleared enough for him to realize his danger. Enough light spilled through the open door of the cabin for Cole to see the guard's gun rising to line up on him.

  Stealth wasn't important anymore. Cole dived forward onto his belly and palmed out his own revolver as the outlaw fired. The bullet whipped over Cole's head, hit something, and whined off into the darkness. The next instant, the .44 in Cole's fist roared and bucked.

  The bullet struck the man in the body and twisted him around, but he didn't go down. He fired again, the slug kicking up dirt a short distance to Cole's left. Cole thumbed off another round. This time the bullet ripped into the outlaw's throat and drove him over backward as blood sprayed from the wound. Cole knew he wouldn't be getting back up.

  But there were plenty of other enemies nearby, and all of them had heard the shots. Men shouted curses and questions and feet pounded the ground as several of the outlaws charged toward the cabin to find out what was going on.

  There was one good thing about being surrounded by enemies, Cole thought grimly. You didn't have to worry about who to shoot. He came to his feet and fired twice more as he ran to his left. He wanted to draw the pursuit away from the cabin so Lon would have a chance to defeat Beaumont and get Brenda Durand out of there.

  Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as the outlaws returned Cole's fire. None of the bullets came close to him as far as he could tell. The angry shouts, along with the gunfire, told him the outlaws were pursuing him, just like he wanted.

  He ran into something in the dark, the impact painfully barking his shins. His momentum carried him forward and made him topple over what turned out to be a fallen tree. That wa
s a lucky break of sorts. He huddled behind the cover of the thick log as he thumbed fresh rounds into his .44, working by feel since he couldn't see much of anything. He didn't have any trouble reloading under these conditions, though. He'd had plenty of experience.

  The outlaws were still yelling and shooting. Most of the bullets went wild, but Cole heard one of them thud into the tree trunk and was glad it was there. When his revolver had a full cylinder, he thrust the gun over the log. Muzzle flashes gave him something to aim at. He fired twice and was rewarded by a man's howl of pain.

  Then he had to flatten behind the log again as the outlaws returned his fire. Now they knew where he was. Chunks of bark and a hail of splinters flew into the air as their bullets chewed into the tree trunk.

  Cole had jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire, and now he had to deal with the heat. It might be worth the risk if it allowed Lon and Brenda to get away.

  And now that all hell had broken loose, Cole hoped that help would be arriving soon, in the form of Kermit Sawyer and the rest of that wild bunch of Texans from the Diamond S.

  Chapter 18

  In the trees, one of the punchers said excitedly, "There's Frenchy's signal, Mr. Sawyer!"

  "I see it," Sawyer growled. Everyone was already mounted, so he didn't have to tell them to get on their horses. Instead he drew one of his pearl-handled Colts and pulled in a breath to call out the order to charge.

  Before he could do that, the crackle of gunfire sounded, but it wasn't coming from the gap between the bluffs. From the sound of it, the shooting was farther away than that, inside the valley where the outlaw hide-out was located.

  "That's not what was supposed to happen!" one of the men exclaimed.

  No, it wasn't, Sawyer thought, but he wasn't really surprised, either. Every plan had things that could go wrong with it, and they usually did. Those shots had to mean that Lon and Marshal Tyler were swapping lead with the owlhoots. The odds would be mighty high against them.

  Which meant that help needed to get to them as quickly as possible. Sawyer leaned forward in the saddle and called in a loud, clear voice, "Let's ride!"